Tempest Rainbow Factory
by ShadowPhoenix101
Summary: There are some connections you'd rather not make.


_This is a one-shot that I wrote (and eventually rewrote) back in June or July of 2013. I'm not sure what other noteworthy things there are to make this author's note go on and on with (although I'll probably type up another thing after I finish typing this thing thus making this thing more or less invalid or something), so I'll just point out one thing: the censoring! Yes, those classy bracket thingies have taken the civil duty of replacing profanity and the like with substitute words that vaguely resemble the original words in a vague manner, even though none of the violence whatsoever has been similarly censored. That's always great, right?_

_Also, yes, this is based off that grimdark Rainbow Factory fan-thingy from MLP. It's just based off the song, though; I haven't read the official fanfic with Scootaloo and such._

_Anyway, feel free to attempt to enjoy this fanfiction-y wordbabble!_

_(Oh, one other note: I still have the original/old/horrible-in-comparison version of this one-shot saved somewhere. I could post it some time in the future if anyone here wants to bask in the sheer prose-y horror of it.)_

* * *

It was dark.

The indigo-hued dragoness slinked through the metallic hallway, eyes darting around to make sure no one had seen her. She rounded a corner, entering a large, dimly-lit room. Before her stood a massive door, stretching twenty feet from a balcony to the ceiling. Grunting, she took a quick glance at the room's contents. There were four tall pedestals close to the room's corners, each one reaching halfway to the ceiling.

_Easy_, the dragoness thought. _They're always triggers. Probably the time-limit kind, too. Nothing I can't handle._

Flapping her magenta-colored wings, she ascended - and banged her head on a metal pipe. She sliced at the pipe with her tail blade, and grinned in satisfaction as she heard it come crashing to the floor - evidently ignoring the possibility of the loud noise blowing her cover. She hovered over one pillar, glancing down into it. There was a grating over a crystalline lump - probably some sort of amateur orb-thing. Rounding the room, the dragoness fired hot white electricity into the pillar-heads, lighting each orb.

Landing on the balcony, the figure impatiently waited for the vault to open as the cover slowly creaked upwards. Slowly.

After about ten seconds, a light flicked on inside the vault, revealing a large wall and a small door.

Glaring at the door, she scanned the room behind her to make sure she hadn't been followed. She thought she could make out some sort of liquid leaking out of the broken pipe, but she ignored it as she bashed the door open and continued onward.

* * *

_Small hallways, huge rooms. Of course._

The dragoness muttered something under her breath as she took a look around yet another large room. It was rectangular, not cube-shaped, and there was a balcony that went around the whole room and split it into two floors. There were doors along the walls on both floors, and on the bottom floor, some stairs lead up to a small and apparently useless pedestal in the middle of the room.

"Cynder?"

She froze.

"Cynder!"

A second figure walked up from the second floor of the other end of the room, peering over the railing. The silhouette was too vague in the darkness, but the high pitch was recognizable anywhere.

"Hi Cynder!"

"Whirlwind? They sent you ahead of me?"

The second figure placed its claws (paws?) on the railing, looking down at Cynder with apparent cheer.

"Uh, yeah! I told them to send backup if I didn't come back after a while. You know how it is~"

Cynder cursed under her breath. She preferred to work solo whenever she could; earlier she'd been glad they hadn't sent her with Spyro this time. "Yeah…"

"Come on up! I wanna show you something!"

Whirlwind skipped off into the nearest doorway, leaving a puzzled Cynder behind. Shaking it off, she flew after her oddly-happy ally, still thinking that wasting metal on some useless pedestal-platform-thing was pretty stupid.

* * *

Plodding on through yet another featureless, long, small, metal hallway, Cynder squinted, confused, staring at the silhouette of Whirlwind's butt. It was too dark to notice much, but something seemed…off.

"Hey Whirlwind?"

"Yeah?"

_…What do I even ask? "Hey, is something different about you?" "So how come you weren't mentioned when they sent me here?" "Hey, don't mind me and how I'm staring at your butt. You're just in front of me and this is all I can stare at."_

"Nothing."

"Nothing…or _something_?" Whirlwind asked dramatically. After a brief silence, she burst out laughing. "I'm sorry! That's just some quote from some weird TV show…thing, and…ahaha! It's…it's great," she said, wiping a tear of too-much-laughing from her eye.

Cynder was slightly unnerved. "…Show?"

"Yeah. The main person guy thingy sounds like Kaos."

Whirlwind skipped back down the hallway, leaving an even more confused Cynder to follow her.

_…Well. That sure helped._

Whirlwind walked up to a door. A plain, metal, lock-covered door. Just like all the other doors. All of them.

She walked up to some sort of panel. A flat-plane-like light beam shot out of it, apparently scanning her eyes. The light shut off, and Whirlwind blinked for a moment, before the door slid open (unlike the other doors - Cynder just smashed the locked ones to shrapnel-y bits). She sped-walked right on through, as Cynder stood there in disbelief.

_How did the door recognize-_

"Are you coming~?"

After a pause, Cynder slowly walked out the door, entering a medium-sized room - one with actual lighting. Kind of dim, but still.

Something hit her - not in the literal way, but, well…you know…

"Is that your 'Polar'…thing?"

"Yeah!" Whirlwind chirped. Her normally odd-dark-blue-whites-with-light-blue-something-else eyes were replaced with pinkeye-like magenta whites (because magenta is obviously white) and yellow irises. Her blue…whatever the rest of her was covered in were replaced with dead white (very very very light gray?)…something-things. Her scaly underparts and feather-ends (and probably the tail too, although Cynder couldn't tell because Whirlwind was staring right at her and thus she couldn't see her butt) were a sort-of-reflective sort-of-blue. "Do you like it~?"

"…It's weird."

"Yeah. I thought it would be all cool and stuff in this place. Y'know?"

"No, not really."

Whirlwind tilted her head. "Don't you have that Phantom form-thingy?"

"All it does is add…stripes or whatever."

"Oh yeah. I was thinking it would be all inverted or ghost-y something cool like that." Whirlwind trotted off, muttering something that sounded like "her molecules got all rearranged," followed by giggling. She walked off to the left; Cynder turned to follow her, and saw what looked like a river of rainbow-colored goo. She couldn't see where it came from or lead to, but she could see a boat in it. A small boat. With paddle-planks. And Whirlwind.

"Aren't you coming~?"

Half-reluctantly, Cynder walked over to the boat and climbed in, sitting on some sort of plank-seat in the inside-middle-back or whatever it was (screw boat anatomy!). Whirlwind got out two paddles/paddle-planks/what-the-heck-are-these-things, then placed them on opposite boat-parts, and began to paddle down the river-thing.

"Row, row, row your boat, gently-"

The boat bumped into the wall. Whirlwind cringed, then tried to actually steer it right.

"…not-so-gently down the…stream-thing…" She paused. "Merrily, merrily, merrily…merrily…life is…uh…but a dream~!"

Another pause.

"Did I get that right?"

Cynder shrugged.

Whirlwind gave her some sort of thumbs up (whether or not she actually had any thumbs), then kept paddling down the goo-river, vaguely humming other nursery rhymes.

"Ring around the rosy, a pocket full of posies~ Ashes, ashes, we all fall down~!"

"That's about the bubonic plague."

"…Oh."

* * *

Cynder swished the paint-like goo around with her hand. Occasionally, a few colored lumps bobbed up out of somewhere (most of them red), but she just brushed them to the side.

"We're here~!"

Cynder glanced up, noticing that the boat had arrived at a wide stairway. The river appeared to still continue after that point, rounding a corner nearby.

"We're supposed to go up the stairs."

"Really? I thought we were gonna swim downriver."

Whirlwind paused, a little thrown-off by the sarcasm, then jumped out of the boat and headed up the stairs. Cynder clambered out of the boat after her, following her up the stairs. The lighting in this area was better than in the others, she noticed, and she could see that the metal had an odd dark-orange hue to it (unless it was just the lighting). Briefly looking at the boat behind her, she noticed that the river also gave off a faint glow.

She ran up the stairs.

* * *

_Mysterious facilities. They're always mysterious facilities. Actually, they're always just facilities. Big, strange facilities with some sort of mystery to them. I'm sick of all these [darn] facilities. Just for ONCE I'd like to be sent to some place that isn't mysterious, or a facility, or anything else related to those. Why can't they send me to bloody skirmishes for once?!_

_Why the [heck] did they send me here, anyway? "Oh we want you to investigate the mystery of blah blah blah" which is obviously a detailed and informative description of what I'm up against. Yes. This gives me such a wonderful mental image. Yeah; a mental image of being bossed around by morons._

_Also, why can't I go solo for once?! Ever since I joined those punks it's been "oh go with this person oh now go with this person oh go with spyro you're perfect for each other oh hey there's this place and these people oh hey it's another group mission because groups are awesome" no, no, NO. Groups are NOT "awesome", and I sure as [heck] can't tolerate that purple [butt]hole. Maybe it's sexism. "OHHHH THE GIRLS ARE TOO WEAAAAK TO GO BY THEMSEELVEEEESSS AND THEY SHOULD GO WITH OTHEEERRRS BECAUSE WE CAN'T HAVE THEM GETTING HUUUURRRRT BECAUSE THEY'RE GIIIIRRRRLS"_

_[FUDGING]_

_JUST_

_FOR ONCE I'D LIKE TO JUST GORILY MAUL PEOPLE TO DEATH BY MYSELF_

_FOR ONCE_

_FOR_

_ONCE_

_AND THAT [DARN] [BUTT]HAT SPYRO THE [DUCK] CAN GO [FUDGING] FALL IN A [CRUD]HOLE AND BURN IN [HECK] FOR ALL I [FUDGING] CARE_

"Can I show you something~?"

Cynder was snapped out of her expletive-laden internal-monologue-based ranting by Whirlwind's cheery voice of…cheerfulness and stuff.

"What is it?"

"The answer…" Whirlwind broke out laughing, as Cynder stood there, moderately confused. "I'm sorry, it's just kind of funny with the reference stuff and the joke-things and…" She cleared her throat and gestured to the door she was now standing in front of.

"To which the answer is in a simple facility~", she sang, as she pushed the door open.

_Great, another faciliWHAT THE [HECK] IS THAT_

Whirlwind shoved Cynder into the next room, shutting the door behind her. Cynder fell forward, landing on a platform, which began to move along a belt of oddly-colored light. Whirlwind hopped onto the platform, waving her arm towards the nearby structure.

It was a blood-stained conveyor belt.

Looking down, she could see the familiar rainbow-colored river-thing far below them.

_Doesn't Whirlwind shoot rainbows…?_

Slowly, she turned to look at her newly-monochromatic ally, an unnerving realization coming before her as Whirlwind stared down at her with the same cheery expression as always.

"You weren't sent after me, were you…?"

"Nope! I've been here the whole time! Actually, I didn't know you were here at first, but then I heard a loud _BANG!_ and I thought that maybe someone got in here. I didn't want anyone falling in anything, so I went to check it out and I saw that it was you~! I'm kind of glad, actually. It's kind of sort of maybe really lonely in here."

"Falling in anything? Do you mean the river-"

"Nonononono!" Whirlwind half-yelled back. "That's just for decoration. Because, you know, it's all pretty and glowy and stuff~"

Cynder just stared at her.

"The falling thingy is…uh…" Whirlwind paused, looking around. Cynder followed her gaze, only for a figure on the conveyor belt to catch her attention.

"Is that Synthesis?!"

"Eh?" Whirlwind looked around, eventually following Cynder's gaze (returning the favor, y'know?). "Oh! Oh yeah! I almost forgot about that guy."

_He left…_ Cynder mouthed to herself.

_But he didn't._

"He was kind of leaving and I thought that, you know, since he's kind of obnoxious and yell-y and he was leaving and probably wasn't coming back…" Whirlwind spoke slowly, "that, you know…maybe it would be okay to, uh, you know…borrow him and stuff. Something. Stuff. Yeah…"

Cynder, horrified, looked down along the belt's path, eventually spotting some sort of metal hole-thing with sharp spin-y parts on the inside.

"What's that?"

Whirlwind looked over at the hole. "Oh, RIGHT! THAT'S the thingy!"

Cynder attempted to leap off the moving platform and fly down and pull the sun dragon off the belt, but a forcefield kept her from moving even one inch, centimeter, millimeter, or other miniscule unit of measurement off the platform-thing. She could only watch in vain as the figure reached the end of the conveyor belt and fell into the hole, sending blood and entrails splattering everywhere.

"Ooh, this is the good part~!"

Whirlwind shot a marking on the platform's center with a rainbow - which disturbed Cynder even further with the additional context-based implications (or something) - making it speed up. The light beam it was moving along dimmed, and a more curvy one lit up; the platform swiveled and slid down the new beam-path-thing. It slowed down next to the ledge the hole was a part of, about fifteen feet below the ledge-top. A faint hissing noise and other weird sound effects came from the wall, before seven streams of color poured out of seven pipes that came out of the wall, emptying their colorful-ish contents into the river.

_A rainbow…_

"Can I start from the beginning with the story-thingy?"

Cynder looked over at Whirlwind, wary.

There was an awkward silence.

"…Okay!"

Whirlwind shot a corner of the platform, sending it speeding off towards a faraway…something.

* * *

"So I went to this one place once~"

Cynder sat on a pile of pillows. They were kind of old and they were lots of colors and they smelled like Pinesol for some odd reason. Whirlwind was standing in front of a hand-drawn map that was attached to some sort of board-thing. The map was kind of cruddy and looked like one of those things people might scribble down when they're high or something.

"It was a place-ish place."

"Okaaaay…"

"There were clouds. And a portal, I think. I ended up in this one place made out of clouds. They were puffy and fluffy and poofy and there were some pillars that looked like marshmallows. Also, there were colorful flying horses with magical butt tattoos."

"Are you high?"

"Not yet."

They just stared at each other.

"So I found this one place and they thought I was some sort of alien-y 'all-ick-corn' or something." Whirlwind giggled. "Heehee, it sounds like one of those magical yelling people things from Skyram or Skywin or something…" She turned towards the right, raised her arm dramatically, and yelled:

"_ALL ICK CORN!_"

A pipe crashed to the ground a dozen yards away, causing the two dragonesses to jump, startled. Whirlwind stared off towards the now-leaking pipe-thing, wide-eyed, for a few seconds.

She then looked back at Cynder, cheery again.

"And then they kind of broke my forehead off and they did fancy stuff and they fixed it and now I can shoot rainbows~!" She posed dramatically. "Oh, also, they're real weird with the rainbow stuff and making them so I kind of have to get them with stuff and stuff. So, you know, I can test ideas and stuff and machine-stuff and stuff so they can see if they want to do stuff with stuff. And stuff."

She paused.

"Stuff."

Her eyes wandered (no, not literally), and she looked in the vaguely general direction of where the hole-machine-thingy probably was. "Mostly I find the stuff-stuff with the enemy-thingies from that Kaos guy, but sometimes other people work too. They're kind of louder and they complain a lot, probably because the stuff that happens to them and stuff is, uh, you know, kind of rude, but, you know…stuff. Yeah…"

Cynder began backing away towards a nearby door.

"Stuff…ooh, I almost forgot the musical numbers! There's the first one and there's the biker gorilla one and it'll probably take me a while to pick one and also I might have to change the words a little because we're in Skylands not that Clydesdale place-thingy and I don't really need therapy so I might have to- CYNDER NOOOO"

Whirlwind ran after the quickly-disappearing indigo figure.

"I WASN'T GONNA EVEN DO STUFF TO YOU! WE'RE FRIENDS! _FRIENDS!_"

Cynder sped down the hallway, frantic, refusing to even look back.

"CYNDER COME BAAAACK"

The hallway emptied into another room, and Cynder jumped up, flying every which way, desperate to find some sort of exit. She flew past long, metallic arms that held various creatures and beings; a machine that systematically knocked out each and every one in turn; the start of that dreaded conveyor belt; patches of blood from where people had tried to escape, only to be foiled by the sharp blades of the machines.

"NO CYNDER WAIT NO DON'T GO THAT WAY"

Cynder swerved around a corner, trying to hide herself from the pursuing voice.

"HOLD ON WAIT WATCH OUT"

A blade-arm sped past Cynder, cutting through one of her wings. She cried out and began to descend down towards the bloody belt.

"OH CRUD NO WAIT I'M SORRY THAT WAS BAD NOT SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN COME BACK CYNDER WAIT"

She crashed into the vile apparatus-thing, taking a few horrible seconds to regain (gain?) her footing. She spotted multiple metal ledges, then proceeded to leap up them to get away from the belt (and the hole) and get to higher ground and find an exit.

"CYNDEEEERRRR"

She leapt between two vertical stretches of wall-metal, then clambered onto the higher ledge and ran along a pole that extended from it.

She could see the door.

"NO WAIT NO NO NONONONONONO"

She ran down the pole, aiming her sights at the ledge in front of the door. If she timed it right, she could glide to the platform, bash the door open, and escape down the hallway. The river-flooded corridor might pose a problem, but even if she couldn't pilot the boat, she was sure she could swim. Anything to escape. Anything to get out.

"NO!"

At the bar's end, she leapt, only to realize in vain as she flapped her wings that her injured one would be unable to sustain a glide. Horrified, she could only watch as she hurdled down towards the whirring blades of the hole below.

* * *

Whirlwind wheeled around the corner (while flying and stuff), only to be greeted by the sight of blood spurting out of the hole yet again. Letting out a yelp, she spun down towards a nearby ledge that was out of the higher one's sight…which lead towards the door's ledge-thing. She landed with a thud, then skip-ran (run-skipped?) towards the hole, skidding towards a stop, looking down at the vaguely purple-coated guts.

Odd sound effects came from the lower wall as rainbow goo poured out of seven little pipes.

"Oh, uh…! Crud! Um…" Whirlwind stared down at the vague carnage. "Well, that was…really bad. Really, really bad."

She paused.

"…Well, I could always build a robot, right? No. They'd notice that she was a robot. Also, I can't build robots."

Another pause.

"Uh, maybe I could just…say she ran away? Yeah! That could work. Maybe that could work. Maybe. 'Cause, you know, she kind of doesn't really like the people there and stuff, so that could make sense. Yeah…"

A third pause.

"…Well. Uh. So…that happened. Yeah…"

After a fourth pause, she turned towards the door and skipped away, hum-singing (sing-humming?) a song to herself.

"_I must break these chains that bind you heeeeere~…_"


End file.
